Custodians:

Toronto Bake Ovens

Toronto boasts a number of permanent bake ovens in neighbourhoods across the city. Most are in public parks, although a few are on private property. Each oven has a different story of how it got built and who built it, and each has its own unique programs. All of the ovens on the list below share the goal of being a public resource.

In 1995, Dufferin Grove got the first outdoor oven located in a Toronto park. Jutta Mason had that idea as the result of watching this little
film at the Toronto Reference Library in 1994. The film was made in 1983 and it's mostly about trains and port wine in the Douro region of Portugal. Near the end (at 35.10 minutes) there is an eyeblink scene about a communal bake oven in a small northern village, revived at the urging of a radical priest. Dufferin Grove Park is in a neighbourhood that has a lot of Portuguese immigrants. An outdoor, communal bake oven seemed like a good thing to try here....read more

Bake ovens can be powerful!

Nov.6, 2018: Shauna Kearns comes to bake at Dufferin Grove Park, and to tell her remarkable story of working with bricklayers at the Trade Institute of Pittsburgh (TIP) to help people coming out of prison to build bake ovens for sale: